#LiteraryMocktails
by Megan Rickerson

• Tumbling Leaf for Christie Hodgen & Elegies for the Brokenhearted
• Lovesong for David Levithan & Songs for Other People’s Weddings
• Like Oil & Balsamic for Naomi Xu Elegant & Gingko Season
• A Tree Grows in Bonhomie for Patrick Ryan & Buckeye

#LiteraryCocktails & Mocktails: The Recipes

[Note: Italicized text is quoted, with occasional minor changes, from the author’s work.]

Christie Hodgen / Elegies for the Brokenhearted / Tumbling Leaf

Try this #LiteraryCocktail when you find it difficult to live in the flat, shallow territory of ordinary life. When you sense a crack running through [you], and the smallest thing opens it up, turns [you] inside out. When you experience the kind of existential crisis […] that results in permanent employment in a kitchen, or simply when you’re feeling just a little out of your elephant.

Tumbling Leaf

2 oz Cinnamon Toast Crunch infused Absolut Vodka [an homage to Carson]

1 oz of the coldest, whitest, wholest of milk

.5 oz 11^th Hour Coffee Liqueur (much better than that awful, though clever, breakroom vending machine coffee)

.25 oz Flor de Caña Spresso Liqueur (much better than Donut Land coffee)

n.b. Skip the raw egg favored by Mrs. Strauss’s father.

Add first three ingredients to a tin with ice, along with a large measure of stupidity but also of trust, of faith—for that sadly noble taste. Shake, knowing this small action will meld the flavors, just as what joins people together [are] the small actions they perform for each other each day. Strain over fresh ice and float with Spresso Liqueur. Garnish with a few squares of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and a donut (from that shop whose name you must not speak.)

Taste this #LiteraryCocktail, and you’ll know that all is not lost, that there is still hope when you discover that its flavors—ascending and descending and ascending again—are as delicate and familiar as the sound of a leaf…blowing in the wind and tumbling to the ground.

Beware: Too many and you’ll be that raw, burning kind of drunk, a warmth going through you…you’ll be absolutely pink.

David Levithan / Songs for Other People’s Weddings / Lovesong

How do you write—wait, no—mix a Lovesong? First, understand that preparing this #LiteraryMocktail will likely play out the way most weddings (and relationships, and a pair of men in a tuxedo sewn for two trying to pee) do… as a messy process with unexpected challenges that test the bounds of teamwork. But in the end, there’s a certain sense of relief. Remember: the heart knows what it wants—this #LiteraryMocktail, of course.

Lovesong

First, listen to lovers and gather their stories in equal measure. Spoon up the best bits—hang on—ingredients—and feel how they land on your heart, and later, in your glass.

Then add:

2 oz Ritual N/A Gin

.75 oz fresh lemon juice

.5 oz simple syrup

1 oz egg white

1 oz of the simple pleasures, through which true love can be measured.

5 or 6 fresh raspberries

Now, let’s get messy: Muddle raspberries in a metal shaker tin. Add everything else with joyous abandon, the way many throw themselves into their relationships. Shake for 15 seconds. As you consider your own [cooling] love story, determine the appropriate amount of ice and shake again to chill—and to remind Florence (with or without the Machine,) that the dog days are decidedly NOT over. Keep shaking until the flavors fly, like kisses scattered on the wind. Double strain into a coupe. Prepare your garnish: Lift a raspberry—delicate and easily broken like one’s heart (or red balloons)—stab it with something sharp—say, a cocktail pick, or a breakup—and sink it into your drink.

Finally: Discover the true reason you mix—no, write—a Lovesong—to taste the tenderness behind the heartache. Raise your glass and promise to leave [your] heart open.

Naomi Xu Elegant / Gingko Season / Like Oil & Balsamic

Sometimes life presents itself as a dichotomy. Emotions, thoughts, and ideas arrive in conflicting pairs, and resolving these conflicts can be as challenging as mingling oil and balsamic. You may see your love interest, and feelings of apprehension and joy will swirl in your heart and fail to integrate. You’ll wonder why confessions remind you of the weight you carried, rather than lightening it. You take a sip of Jia Duo Bao and feel both homesick and at home. The remedy: Cross the obsidian depths (of the bar) and seek the (fake star-) light to find the bartender, Hoang, to whom you’d like to commit, but also won’t, and order this #LiteraryCocktail.

Like Oil & Balsamic

2 oz Rabbit Hole Rye Whiskey

.75 oz St. George Spiced (canonical) Pear Liqueur

.5 oz Cynar Artichoke Liqueur to recall sharing artichokes with Hoang

2 dashes Angostura Orange Bitters

Rattle the ice and alcohol [and the rest of the ingredients] in a gleaming…mixing glass. Also combine your happy equilibrium of habit, solitude, and friendship with the destabilization of love, and throw them in too. Stir for about 20–30 seconds, until well-chilled and your opposing feelings coalesce. Strain into a chilled coupe or Nick & Nora glass. As a purely symbolic gesture, top with a single drop each of oil and balsamic. Garnish with a thin slice of non-pear-shaped Asian pear. Serve with a Jia Duo Bao chaser.

Go ahead and commit: Take a sip and discover that despite your reservations, love and an easy contentment can coexist.

How do we know? A little mouse told us.

Patrick Ryan / Buckeye / A Tree Grows in Bonhomie

While Bloxhum’s may be the finest whiskey Ohio has to offer, we know what sorts of decisions might arise from spending an evening drinking it, so we’re skipping the Bloxhum’s here. Think of this #LiteraryMocktail as a remedy, to fill an emptiness that’s not hunger—the doldrums. Try it when you think you ought to melt yourself down to fit a mold made from some unknown person’s ideals, or you feel like you’ve drawn the short end of the stick, even as you realize there’ve been no sticks, and no drawing. When circumstances hit you so strongly that you practically have tire tracks across your stomach and nearly have to brush broken glass out of your hair. When you want to collect all the versions of yourself, lock them away, and lose the key.

A Tree Grows in Bonhomie

2.5 oz Ritual n/a Whiskey

.5 oz vanilla-root beer simple syrup

1 oz of the love you keep in a little jar in the kitchen

2 dashes of All That Bitters n/a Aromatic Bitters

First, drop all the things you’ve been carrying over the years, and finally, without that weight, lift your head…and follow the rest of the instructions:

Add all ingredients to a tin with ice. Shake long enough to allow the flavors to develop, to change—like a buckeye sapling growing over decades—and like people do, since we’re all works in progress. Strain over one large cube in a double rocks glass. Garnish with a buckeye, but not a real one, unless you’re a squirrel. Inhale the scent of two momentous meetings: root beer for Cal & Becky, and vanilla for Margaret & Felix.

Raise your glass and toast: Keep swimming.

The Reading & The Room

We celebrated Love & Loss with Ms Valentine, decorated with quotes from the authors’ books emblazoned on Valentines created by Robin—our own love-notes to the authors—and a photo op back drop that turned guests and authors into a pair of cherubs, painted by Tina Gargiulo, #YeahYouWrite’s resident artist. 

Open Mic Readers:

Rapid-Fire Q&A

Meet the Authors